Vanessa at Feministing takes issue with Naomi Wolf’s cover piece this past weekend in New York Magazine: The Porn Myth. It’s not a new article, it just seems to keep getting recycled. I commented on it back in May 2004.
One of the things about blogging for several years: one’s opinions and views evolve, and one is then left with the interesting archival evidence of that evolution. While consistency is surely a virtue, so too is a willingness to rethink one’s stance on key issues, especially in light of new information or further reflection. So, since Wolf’s piece reappeared online this week, I’m going to revisit what I said in 2004. More to the point, I’m going to reject much of what I had to say three years ago.
I am as thoroughly anti-porn as it gets, as any visitor to my pornography archive will quickly read. (That sounds more titillating than it us.) I agree with Wolf’s view that pornography tends to destroy authentic sexual appetite. She writes:
The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.
Wolf talks of chats with college-aged women who relate their anxieties about competing with pornography, and what she writes rings true with me. Where Wolf falls down — and where Vanessa was right to challenge her, and I was wrong not to do so in 2004 — is that Wolf urges women to adopt modesty and concealment as a strategy for reenergizing the male libido. Wolf is enchanted by the story of an observant Jewish friend of hers, a woman who allows only her husband to see her hair, and the rest of the time, keeps it concealed under a wig or a scarf. Wolf writes:
I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.”
The red flag for me in 2007 (which wasn’t there in 2004) is the verb in bold. The implication is that in and of themselves, men lack the incentive and the ability to maintain a strong and vibrant sexual focus solely on their wives. It’s a great passage from Scripture she quotes, mind you, and one I love. Married men are called to direct all of their sexual energy towards their wives, even as both they and their wives age. But it’s not women’s job to “create mystery” in order to keep men excited! While marriage is surely a partnership, it is deeply misguided (if very traditional) to suggest that wives must strategize to keep their husbands from straying in act or thought, with flesh-and-blood mistresses or with cybersex.
The story Wolf tells of her bewigged friend Ilana is frustrating for this very reason. Wolf is on awe at what she imagines is the steamy eroticism of this very traditional Orthodox marriage, and is convinced that it is Ilana’s modesty that is the cause of the continued strong sexual charge between husband and wife. Coming at the end of an article about porn, it’s hard to miss the implication that Wolf is convinced that if more women would simply be more like Ilana (creating “mystery” by hiding themselves), more boyfriends and husbands would be more sexually excited by enduring monogamous relationships.
What’s wrong with this seemingly commonsensical analysis is, of course, that it’s rooted in the notion that men are hardwired to pursue “everlasting novelty.” The everlasting novelty thesis of male sexuality suggests that women who want monogamy from their male mates need to pursue an aggressive strategy in order to overcome a man’s “natural” programming to stray, to seek out what is new, to become fascinated with seeing (or touching, or possesing) new skin. According to this thesis (so memorably satirized in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale) women need new outfits, new hairstyles, new transformations on a regular basis in order to fool their husbands and boyfriends into thinking that they are somehow a series of different women. Call it the “familiarity breeds contempt” theory of enduring sexual attraction.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for two people experimenting with new ideas for keeping their sexual life fresh and exciting. I understand completely that routine is indeed the enemy of eros. But there’s all the difference in the world between urging men and women not to get stuck in sexual ruts, and suggesting that women need to conceal themselves in order to capture and hold male attention. The former bit of advice doesn’t place any gender-based onus on one partner more than the other. The latter suggests that the male longing for everlasting novelty is women’s problem to solve, and that’s absolutely, shockingly, indefensibly wrong.
Whether or not promiscuity is hardwired into the male brain is ultimately irrelevant. Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming. Just as we can learn to pee in toilets rather than wetting ourselves, we can learn not only to practice monogamy but to do so with enthusiasm. What I find so wonderfully challenging about monogamy isn’t just staying faithful. Not sleeping with other people, not flirting with other people, not fantasizing about other people — heck, that’s just the beginner’s class! (All good stuff, mind you.) The advanced class in monogamy work is maintaining strong and enduring sexual excitement. Monogamy is not merely about what you don’t do with others, it is also — at its very core — about what you do do with your partner. It is a mandate for both parties to be creative, to be persistent, to be brave. As a husband, my responsibility is to keep my sexual energy focused on my wife no matter what she wears, no matter what she weighs, regardless of whether or not she covers her gorgeous hair with a wig or a baseball cap or lets her curls down in public. My wife has the same responsibility towards me. This doesn’t mean we are obligated to please each other; it doesn’t give either of us the right to demand sex. But, practicing the mutual submission that Scripture calls us to, it means we don’t expect the other to be in charge of keeping us excited, aroused, hot.
Nothing exasperates me more than the enduring myth of male weakness. Nothing infuriates me more than the suggestion that it is women’s responsiblity to keep men focused, to keep men faithful, to keep men aroused. Naomi Wolf is, as far as I’m concerned, spot on accurate in her indictment of pornography. But her suggestion that women ought to adopt modesty as a strategy to keep their present (or future) boyfriends and husbands on track and away from porn is dead wrong.
Note: this thread is for feminist or feminist-friendly comments only.
what creeps me out about the Modesty in Public argument for keeping a monogamous relationship sexually charged is the overtone of possessiveness in it - the idea that what continually turns a guy on is the idea that he’s seeing and having something that other men can’t. it ends up having less to do with the woman herself, as a person, and everything to do with other men and competition.
ick.
I agree with you. And, overall, I’m just impressed that Naomi was so right on about porn being anti-sexuality. That is soooo true.
Hugo, I’m not actually sure if so much rethinking is necessary on your part, because I’m not sure you and Vanessa are correct in reading Wolf’s article in the way you do (this time around, anyway). Yes, Wolf uses the phrase “to help men.” But which men is she talking about? From what I can tell of the article, she is talking about the men whom women are married to. That is, the woman in a marriage ought to contribute to making their joint “married space” one in which whatever weaknesses her spouse may or may not have (weaknesses that, whatever their origin, are clearly exacerbated by the pornographic culture in which we live) can be compensated for. That’s not enabling a man in his (supposed) weaknesses, that’s not strategizing–that’s charity and love. I don’t see any indication in Wolf’s article that, within the married space, the man shouldn’t consider similar sorts of actions or behaviors out of a genuine concern for his spouse’s needs. Taking into consideration the whole person one is married to, including their sexual desires, isn’t the same as taking responsibility away from them; it’s just part of that “mutual submission” you praise.
Maybe there’s a fine line here, one that–given the misogyny present in the world–we ought to be extra careful about. Yes, husbands need to take responsibility for their own addictions, and not shove responsibility in any way off on their wives. But a loving wife in a good marriage will want to share that responsibility regardless, as should a loving husband. And if that genuine, charitable want might be expressed through the sort of recommendations Wolf makes, I’m not sure what harm to the actualization of women (and men) has been done.
Hugo, you probably know I read your blog and am generally impressed. But I was really amazed at how wrong I found your 2004 self to be, particularly in this line:
Please tell me you’ve rethought that statement as well.
Russell, when you put it that way, I agree with you. I just bristled at Wolf’s line about how traditional cultures “understand male sexuality”. The implicataion I got, perhaps wrongly, is that they understand male sexuality to be something for which women (particularly wives) are responsible. Perhaps I was uncharitable in my reading.
Tam, I do indeed reject that statement. I blog in haste and repent in leisure.
In addition, her article completely leaves out queer women. The way we dress or act doesn’t have anything to do with the comodification of lesbianism that is sold by the mainstream porn industry. Wearing a wig is not going to do anything to stop that. Her argument is silly and is based on the premise that if individual women can bust their humps to change their individual males via traditional modesty, then porn will just shrivel up. Yeah, right. It is the industry and the wider society that need to be changed and challenged, not just your boyfriend.
For the Orthodox Jewish example Wolf puts forward, many people within the Orthodox Jewish world lodge many complaints against it, that their sex lives improved after they STOPPED keeping family purity laws (where you abstain from sex with your husband during your period and for 5 or 7 days afterwards). Others, use the period of sexual abstention in Orthodox Jewish marriages as an excuse to justify seeing prostitutes - not exactly good for one’s marriage. I suppose the effects of keeping family purity laws is more a refelction of the quality of the marriage in the first place and does not change things one way or the other. If a couple are sexually apathetic to each other the 2 weeks of no sex won’t matter.
A few married Orthodox Jewish women I met in Israel confided to me that covering your hair in public all the time once you get married is almost traumatic. For one thing, it is especially uncomfortable in warm weather (”She must feel so hot” - yeah, I bet she does, literally). In a way the sheitel (wigs that Orthodox Jewish women wear) is a metaphor for the way in which Orthodox Judaism is stifling to women’s free expression.
It could be that privately, Naomi Wolf is warming up to Orthodox Judaism and it is being reflected in her work.
Truth be told, I am coming to the belief that Orthodox Jews tell non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews how sexually hot Orthodox marriages are as a means of marketing their lifestyle to those outside. Many people, especially those raised Orthodox, are so uptight from years of sex-negative attitudes being pushed on them that they enter marriage not knowing themselves sexually or how to please their partners. There was a story, I think in teh Jerusalem Post once a year or two ago, about prostitutes that live just outside heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and specifically service sexually frustrated Orthodox Jewish men. In too many cases, wives especially buy into the sexual repression of the Orthdox world, perhaps moreso than the men.
Check out, if you can, a yahoo forum called Frumsex. It will be eye opening.
On another note, in this whole debate I am reminded of a sketch by Dave Chapelle where he says that the value of women and sex had decreased because women give it away. He says that if it were a stock it would be plummeting. He then tried to act out a business reporter on something like CNNMoney saying “P***y is down 10 points on the NASDAQ…”
The mesage is that women could raise their “stock price” and get the things they want from men by making sex less available. This does not mean covering up and being more traditional, just not dropping the panties so qiuickly. These are two different things. My Arabic teacher said (and I observed oncfe while walking through Haifa) that a lot of young Israeli Arab women dress to the 9s in a way that is very sexy but they are also chaperoned by their father and brothers constantly and so one may look all you want (though not too hard, I suppose) but you don’t touch uless you can get into teh good graces of the woman’s male relatives. Not that this is better, but I’m just trying to illustrate that there are MANY things that come before actually having sex with someone.
Then again, I suppose you don’t want for peopel to decide to get married in order to get sex, and then losing interest in their spouse and realizing how incompatible they are after the sx haze has lifted (which is what I heard happens with a lot of Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt and why teh divorce rate in thsi country is highest there).
At the end of the day, I suppose you can’t ever really win.
Hugo:
I do enjoy your writing and I appreciate the fact that you are able to look at yourself, see where you’ve been, and decide — not only that you’ve moved and grown — but you feel obligated to re-engage with what passed before. Many people (most?) would just hope that they would not be taken to task for their youthful beliefs.
I’ll stop with that, however. It amazes me that there is such a strong, unthinking acceptance of monogamy as the goal and best approach for society. The lure of variety is bad because it interferes with monogamy, so we have to do what we can to simulate variety without actually enjoying variety. But what if it is the idea/ideal of monogamy that is the problem in relationships?
Since I don’t buy into the basic premise of either the article or the post, anything further on my part will just be seen as an attempt to thread jack, and that’s not what I aim to do. I enjoy my time here and will now relurk.
Vir Modestus, I caught a huge amount of flak the last time I issued a stirring call to monogamy, particularly when I insisted that it is the best vehicle for personal growth and transformation out there. So I’ll just admit here that yeah, I do assume that pursuing a variety of partners rather than working to create greater and greater intimacy with one person is, well, short of the mark.
An old mentor of mine told me “You can have lots of the same experience with different people, or lots of different experiences with the same person. But you gotta pick, and the latter is always better.”
I suppose — without evidence other than my own abundant experience — that that’s still my view.
Actually, it looks to me like the verb “help” in that sentence is attached to “cultures,” not to women. Actually, she says the cultures do “what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time,” so it sounds like they’re influencing the behavior of both sexes. Certainly cultures inevitably shape our sexual attitudes, so I don’t see what’s wrong with saying a culture can “help” a person’s marriage. (Whether you think it actually does help, in this case, is another subject.)
Camassia, that’s fair — but why then the “men, in particular” bit? That’s what made me think Wolf was trotting out the Myth of Male Weakness, the one where we with the Y chromosome need Special Help to stay faithful, committed, and excited by our wives.
Hugo:
I understand — I remember the flak. But my comment wasn’t aimed at just you, it is the overall assumption of the culture we live in. I’m just now coming to terms with my own approach to consensual non-monogamy and so, of course, I’m seeing the unquestioned assumption everywhere. Like seeing blue cars after you just bought a blue car.
I would respectfully disagree with your mentor. One doesn’t have to “pick” because the binary is a false dichotomy. People are all different. The same experience with two different people wouldn’t be experienced in the same way, each person would filter and live the experience differently, depending on her/his life experiences, and sharing that with those people would cause my own experience to differ.
That’s one reason why I’m very ambivalent towards porn. The LA porn industry is heinous: bad conditions, bad treatment of actors (women particularly, of course), bad depictions of life and love, and ultimately bad product. But humans learn by watching and in our sex-obsessed culture many try to find out how things work by watching the only sexual expressions they can find: mass market porn. People want to learn and yet what they are learning is skewed tremendously towards misogyny and false sense of what “real” sexuality is. And yet we all want to know how “it” is supposed to work. We certainly didn’t/don’t get it in school, especially with the lies the “abstinence only” folks dish out. So we seek that knowledge and we find lies. Sad, really.
I absolutely agree with you that it is not up to the woman to “help” her partner create focus or mystery or keep the fires burning, or what have you. Men don’t need to be catered to, they need to take responsibility for themselves. This man is learning how (it’s a lifelong course of study) to be the best partner I can, by seeing, actually experiencing and reveling in my partner(s) as she is, and not compare her to the lies of the porn industry or any other false idyll (pun intended).
kate.d: what creeps me out about the Modesty in Public argument for keeping a monogamous relationship sexually charged is the overtone of possessiveness in it - the idea that what continually turns a guy on is the idea that he’s seeing and having something that other men can’t. it ends up having less to do with the woman herself, as a person, and everything to do with other men and competition.
ick.
Exactly. Taken to an extreme, you get burqa wearing women being viewed as normal and reasonable, because the men are weak willed dogs who cannot be trusted to view an ankle or midriff without being driven into fits of lust. Nor should we in the West be too quick to shake our heads at the poor oppressed Muslim women - we had our own flirtation with such “modest” foolishness in the Victorian age.
We still have a cultural hangover of this - when a man rapes a woman, many are quick to ask “what was she wearing? where was she? was it late at night?” Because the rapist was a weak man who was driven into a lust-fueled temporary insanity by what that temptress was wearing, naturally.
Doesn’t compute for me, sorry.
I don’t think it should be either-or. Either burqification or pornification is too much - there has to be a reasonable middle ground.
“Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming.”
Nice quote. I don’t buy it.
If your statement is true, then the reparative therapy people are correct and all gays and lesbians can be converted to heterosexuality.
You sure you believe that?
I suspect that the strength and kind of hardwiring varies and different people might require different answers.
And yeah, I’m totally ignoring the theological and recovery problems brought up by my approach.
Rob, I’ve posted about this before. Yes, I think free will can trump any programming. I think reparative therapy can work, and I’ve met people who claim it does work, and I believe them. But just because we can change our nature doesn’t mean we always should. I don’t happen to believe gayness is a problem to solve.
I am quite confident that if I wanted to, with God’s grace and a lot of effort, I could become attracted to men. I’m not, and see no reason to be. But is that potential within me — and, IMO, in every human being? You bet.
I am, as usual, amused that the nature vs. nurture debate is once again polarized into an all or nothing thing.
Of course, if it isn’t it doesn’t lend itself well to doctrinaire political dogma and demonizing those who disagree with you.
Vir Modestus, I caught a huge amount of flak the last time I issued a stirring call to monogamy, particularly when I insisted that it is the best vehicle for personal growth and transformation out there.
Which puts you at odds with Paul. That said, a lot of the “flak” was less about your point of view and more about your taking cheap shots at anyone who might disagree with you.
As Treifalicious points out, one of the things Wolf does not note, in her obsession with her friend’s hair, is that Orthodox Jews follow family purity laws that disallow sex, or even affectionate contact, during the woman’s menstrual period and for a certain number of days thereafter. I’m not saying this guarantees great sex, but it probably has a lot more to do with Ilana’s marriage than the hair-covering.
The mesage is that women could raise their “stock price” and get the things they want from men by making sex less available. This does not mean covering up and being more traditional, just not dropping the panties so qiuickly.
And, again, the message is that for women, sex is a commodity with no inherent value of its own. The idea of girls dressing sexy but walking around ‘protected’ is especially creepy; woman as bling.
I am, as usual, amused that the nature vs. nurture debate is once again polarized into an all or nothing thing.
For once I agree with Gonz.
Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming.
This is sort of true, in the sense that sufficient effort and cultural pressure can change people’s behavior every which way. But that doesn’t mean that we’re blank slates, and that all those changes will be comfortable to live.
The reason it’s wrong for men to expect me to be constrained to modest dress and behavior to control their natural desire for variety isn’t that people are so darn malleable that men can always control their desire for promiscuity (heck, even women, angels in the house though we’ve been expected to be, don’t always manage to control that desire for variety). It’s that people aren’t completely malleable, that there is a natural desire for freedom that women, as well as men, have, that is violated if I’m obliged to wear constraining clothes and limit my movements to control men’s wandering eyes. It’s that my natural desires count every darn bit as much as those of men, and it’s that equally applying the “your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins” rule to men and women alike is more just than imposing extra constraints on women for men’s convenience.
I think reparative therapy can work
And I think that the vocal range analogy that someone used in an earlier thread works well here - some people’s attractions may shift, as some people’s vocal range does, but it’s no more possible to shift everyone between the far ends of the Kinsey scale than it’s possible to make every deep alto into a coloratura soprano.
But just because we can change our nature doesn’t mean we always should. I don’t happen to believe gayness is a problem to solve.
I’d put it more that it can be extremely hard work to change even just your sexual behavior (let alone your sexual desires) from what feels like your natural inclination. And that hard work is worth it, if “doing what comes naturally” has been leading to hurt all around. If a guy following his natural desire for promiscuity is leaving a trail of broken hearts, abandoned children, etc., because he just isn’t taking responsibility for the natural consequences of his choices, then at some point, the fact that he has a natural desire for variety becomes a weak excuse for the choices he’s made in acting on that desire.